A Valediction, A Way Forward
by chinaink
Summary: "It's the life that was stolen from you. The life you could have had with her. It's the finality of it, understanding that whatever remnants you had are gone forever." Natasha's voice is even and sure, and the knowledge that she came for him, that something has indefinably shifted between the two of them, is something he didn't expect to be grateful for. Steve/Natasha friendship.


**A Valediction, A Way Forward**

"It's the life that was stolen from you. The life you could have had with her. It's the finality of it, understanding that whatever remnants you had are gone forever." Natasha's voice is even and sure, and the knowledge that she came for him, that something has indefinably shifted between the two of them, is something he didn't expect to be grateful for. Steve/Natasha friendship, post _The Winter Soldier._

* * *

Steve gets the news on one of his drop sites.

He's got several set up, courtesy of Sam Wilson, who had patiently explained to him how they worked, how to set one up, why it was necessary. Ever since Hydra had slunk from the shadows and reared its head, ever since S.H.I.E.L.D. had a knife twisted deep into its belly and burned to the ground, their lives had circled around drop sites and burner phones, clandestine meetings and a constant game of looking over one's shoulder. It had been about waiting, and more waiting, an interminable amount of waiting.

Steve is a soldier, not a spy. He walks with his back straight in the sunlight and salutes his superiors, follows the orders he is given. He has lived his whole life within the confines of borders and lines – black and white, right and wrong. He wasn't born or trained for this life of secrecy and paranoia, this life of darkness and shadow and web upon web of lies.

Steve knows who the enemy is and he wants nothing more than to gut them, cut their feet out from under them. Except – Fury is underground, Natasha is in the wind, and the rest of the Avengers are scattered across the globe. There's nothing that can be done, no action that can be taken, until they know how deep the conspiracy goes, how much has been compromised, how to hit where it would hurt the most.

It had been so much easier, simpler, in the world he had been born into. You knew which side was good, which side was evil. You knew which side of the line you stood on. You looked the enemy in the eye and you knew what you were fighting for. You understood how to cut off his head so he didn't get back up.

Waking up in the 21st century was waking up in a world where those lines didn't exist anymore, and everything was painted in shades of gray he couldn't recognize. It was waking up in a world where people who were fighting for those same ideals he thought he could identify lied and killed and broke those very ideals in order to achieve them. A world where your enemy wore the face of your friend, and those you thought were your friends, who could be new friends, did their very best to break you. He woke up in a world that was turned upside down, a world he doesn't understand, and every day, Steve wakes up and knows he doesn't belong.

So Steve waits. He waits for news, he waits for a sign, he waits to figure out his next move; every day his frustration mounting. And every day, he searches for signs of the winter soldier, a man he once called Bucky Barnes.

Steve sees the blinking new message icon on his screen and clicks on it. The subject heading reads simply: _Peggy_, and Steve freezes. The body of the message contains only a 10-digit phone number. Steve looks at the message for a long time, a sinking, itching feeling of dread stealing furtively through the pit of his stomach.

He fumbles for his current burn phone and notices detachedly his fingers are shaking. Steve punches in the number, waits for it to ring. He forces himself to breathe, inhale, exhale.

She picks up on the fifth ring. "Hello?"

The voice is vaguely familiar, an ambiguous recollection sparking at the fringe of his memory, and he hesitates, straining to pick up any other ambient sounds through the line.

"Who is this?" she asks, sharply.

Steve clears his throat. "This is uh, Steve. Rogers. You sent a message."

"Steve," she breathes, "Thank you for calling. I didn't know how else to reach you."

"Who am I talking to?" he asks.

"This is Sharon. Sharon Carter. Agent 13."

Steve doesn't respond, and she clarifies.

"I'm the nurse. I am – was – your neighbor."

"You're…Carter? I'm sorry, ma'am, I don't understand. What's this about?"

There's a pause on the line. "I'm Peggy's niece. She was my aunt. I'm sorry you had to find out like this, but I thought it was best you hear it from me, instead of on the news or something–" For the first time Steve can hear the strain in her tone, the cracks littering her words.

"She passed away, Steve. Last night, in her sleep. I'm so sorry." There's a tremor in her voice.

Steve stops breathing for a long, motionless minute, as the world grinds abruptly to a halt.

"Are you still there, Steve?"

"How is that possible?" he finally asks.

He can hear Sharon suck in a breath. "You knew she'd been sick for a while. They did everything they could for her–"

"No," he interrupts brusquely. "How is it possible that you're her niece? You're in your what, mid 20's? I might have been in ice for 70 years, but I'm pretty sure basic arithmetic hasn't changed."

"She was my great-aunt. But I always called her Aunt Peggy." Sharon sounds unsettled. "Did you hear what I said, Steve?"

Steve takes a deep breath, in and out, and says steadily, "Please stop calling me that."

"Your name?" This time she doesn't hide the confusion in her voice.

"Stop saying my name like you know me, like we're friends. We've spoken a handful of times in my hallway. You've been lying to me about who you are from the start, and now there's one more lie to add to that pile. How can I believe what you're telling me? I saw Peggy last week. I sat next to her, and we talked."

There's silence on the other end, and finally Sharon informs him, placidly, "The service is in two days, Wednesday, four o'clock at Arlington."

"I saw her last week," Steve reiterates, and he can feel that itch in his gut sink its claws in and twist.

"She talked about you all the time," Sharon says, softly. "She never forgot you."

Steve grips the phone so tightly he's pretty sure it's going to crumple in his hands any minute, his knuckles bleeding white. He grits his teeth and snarls, "How can I believe you?"

Sharon's answer is so faint he has to strain to hear, over the line, across the distance separating them.

"Because she was my best girl, too." Her voice breaks.

It feels like time has stopped, everything in slow motion and swirling around him, pinpricks of light and mass and time flowing by and between and through him. But then, time has always stopped for him, the one man who didn't have to obey the rules of relativity and age, who was exempt from such trivial things as nature's laws; the one man who got to cheat death. The one man whom time had forsaken. He just didn't fully realize how much it had forsaken him.

"I'm sorry for your loss," Steve says, his voice sounding strangely disconnected and distant to his own ears, before there's the sound of crunching plastic, and the phone lies in pieces on the floor.

Steve sinks down to the ground and retches, his stomach dry heaving, chest spasming. His knees bang into his shield, propped up against the wall like a shiny red and white beacon, and he runs his fingers over the smooth metal, once, twice. He lifts it up, and the vibranium, as it always does, fits snugly in his grip, easy and familiar. He flicks his wrist and throws it with all his might through the window, ignoring the crash of glass shattering around him, the groan of ripping wood and cement; ignoring the screaming in his own head, the splintering in his heart.

* * *

Sam finds him later, perched on the roof of the ten-story apartment complex they're currently staying in, staring into the distance, staring into the burnt umber of the setting sun, staring at nothing.

"Think it might be time to move on to the next place," he says lightly. "Hear you gave the neighbors quite the scare."

Sam hands Steve his shield wordlessly, and settles down beside him, shoulder bumping against his.

* * *

It was a few days after the events of New York when Fury calls him into his office and hands Steve a slip of paper.

"An old friend I thought you might want to see." Fury nods at the note.

Steve glances down and sees an address in Maryland, written in Fury's untidy scrawl. He looks at the director and arches an eyebrow.

"Margaret Carter." Fury's voice is unusually gruff. "She's there."

Steve feels the sheer astonishment plow into him without warning, shaking him to his core, rendering him temporarily speechless. He rocks unsteadily back.

"Peggy?" He finally splutters. "She's….alive?"

"She's alive," Fury confirms, then hesitates. "Rogers – you should prepare yourself. She's well into her 90's."

Steve feels a hot, fierce surge of anger slick through his veins. "You knew this all along – and you never told me. How could you–" he growls, low and dangerous. "_You never told me._"

"I'm telling you now," Fury dismisses. "She helped found S.H.I.E.L.D. Built this place from the ground up. In her lucid moments, she's been told about you. She's expecting you." His one eye stares back at Steve, lancing through him, shrewd and calculating. "You should prepare yourself."

Steve turns on his heel, heart beating loud in his ears, wings on his feet.

* * *

Peggy lives in an elegant, two-story brownstone on a quiet, tree-lined street, with a team of caregivers constantly at her side. She had adamantly refused to be moved into a nursing home, preferring to stay amongst her things, a lifetime's worth of collected possessions, photos and mementos from each generation of her family surrounding her.

"I've damn well earned the right to die at home, in my own bed, without being treated like some irrelevant old woman. I've sure as hell earned the right to die in peace," she asserts to Steve later on, during one of his weekly visits, and he can only smile at her sadly.

That first time, he inches slowly into her room, heart in his throat, trying to make himself as light and quiet as possible, expecting to see a ghost. She was a ghost, but so very frail and small, a delicate bird dwarfed by the cage of her bed frame and pillows. She didn't fit into the jigsaw of his memory, where always she loomed, larger than life, a woman who was beautiful and strong and full of life, who could take him down a peg or two and had no qualms about doing so. This Peggy was a ghost like he could never have imagined, and Steve tries so desperately hard not to let his shock show through, but her eyes are still the same, shining bright and vibrant from a sunken face (_how could he forget? they stare back at him from the locket he keeps next to his heart, they are the last thing he sees behind his eyelids before he falls asleep_) and they zero in on him sharply.

"Steve," she utters, her voice throatier, more gravelly than he remembers it, and beckons him forward. His feet take him automatically, and he kneels by her bedside as she grasps his hand, his large one dwarfing her tiny one.

"You're alive. You came back. You came back to me," she whispers. "It's been such a long, long time." And then she's crying, bright tears rolling down her wrinkled cheeks, and Steve feels the wetness on his own cheeks, and overwhelmed, he bends down and rests his forehead against her hands.

"I couldn't leave my best girl," he tells her, choking on his own voice, and feels her fingers, feather light, dust across his hair.

* * *

He visits her every week, oftentimes multiple times a week, bringing flowers and sometimes even balloons, silly little things to brighten up that room. He studies the framed photos, the cards and drawings and awards pinned to her walls and decorating the furniture, and reads about her family, the man she married and bore children with, her children's children, and their children. He reads between the lines about the life she's led, the accomplishments she's achieved, the journey she's taken. But always, always, there's a dull ache in his heart, a stinging throbbing in the back of his throat, and a mouthful of questions unasked, answers he's afraid of knowing.

Peggy sees it in his face, and she smiles gently at him. "I've had a long, full life, Steve. There are regrets, sure, but who doesn't, and there were some dark times, but there has been a lot of happiness, too. I couldn't have asked for more." She pats his hand, her eyes faraway. "I did my very best. Don't waste your tears on an old lady."

Steve returns her smile determinedly, and squeezes her hand. "I never got that dance from you. I've come to collect." He tries to phrase it teasingly, but it falls flat, the unspoken emotion lying voluminous between them; the days and years and decades of hopes and dreams and what-if's stretching endlessly between them, a chasm he can never cross.

"Oh, Steve, I've already had my dance," she tells him. "Now you need to find yours. With the right partner."

"You were the right partner," Steve whispers to her, tucking a strand of gray hair behind her ears, and Peggy looks into his eyes.

"I wasn't," she says, simply.

Steve watches her in the dusky light, her face framed in the muted evening glow and her hair a white halo around her, dark eyes twinkling out at him, and he realizes with a jolt of terror that he doesn't know how to draw her. The other Peggy, the one he sees in his dreams, he can draw with his eyes closed, long fluid lines and soft curves, but this one in front of him has more hard angles and harsh shades, despite her diminutive stature. This one in front of him has weight across her delicate shoulders, sadness and longing behind her eyes, the burden of memory and experience he does not share, and he does not know how to capture it.

Then again, he hasn't much felt the desire to draw, these days.

"Tell me about your life. Tell me what happened…after," Steve asks her later, on another visit.

Peggy is silent for a long moment before she replies. "Perhaps it's better to let the past lie where it belongs, and not dredge up old memories that might only bring pain. I don't have long left in this world, and I want to spend what's left in happiness." She reaches out a trembling hand and strokes his cheek. "I will always be grateful to whatever power brought you back into the twilight of my life. But Steve, your life is just beginning. I want you to move forward. You shouldn't be spending so much of your time with a rambling old woman. Shouldn't you be out getting fondue with some lovely young lady?" She smiles cheekily at him.

Steve laughs in spite of himself. "I don't get much fondue these days. Don't make too many plans, truthfully."

Peggy gives him a knowing look, but her body is wracked by deep, rattling coughs, and the nurse on duty ushers him away.

There are days when he visits and one of the nurses will shake her head at him, and Steve will understand it's one of those days when Peggy isn't fully herself, when she will look at him and gaze right through him, into a past only she can see.

He'll sit beside her anyway, and listen quietly as she mumbles to herself, even though sometimes her recollections will stir the memories he has locked deep within himself, ripping open that ache inside of him, causing it to pulse and chafe excruciatingly. Yet he drinks these moments in greedily, hungry for snippets of her life, ashamed of this ultimate invasion of her privacy, her vulnerability; savoring the sharp, bitter pain it brings him.

"Next Saturday, at the Stork Club. Eight o'clock on the dot. Don't you dare be late!" Peggy cries out, and Steve shuts his eyes tightly, picturing her at the controls in some dank, dark bunker, straining to cling onto his voice through the radio. Their last conversation. Seventy years ago for her, and barely yesterday for him.

"I waited for you. Oh Steve, I waited so very, very long. Every Saturday I was there, but you never walked through that door, and I waited and waited until I couldn't anymore," Peggy sobs, her eyes moving rapidly beneath her lids, and Steve's breath chokes in his throat and he bends over to kiss her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks.

"I'm here now, Peggy," he murmurs to her. "I'm right here." But she is beyond hearing him.

He looks around at the pictures on her dresser and thinks the thought he will never give voice to: _They should have been my children. This should have been my family, with you. These should have been the faces of our children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren._ He bows his head and clutches her hand tightly in his own, and waits for her to come back to herself.

It takes longer and longer each time he sees her.

The second to last time he visits her, she's lucid for only a short time, and chides him on his appearance. "You're not getting enough sleep. Look at those dark circles under your eyes. And I think you've lost weight. What are they feeding you over at S.H.I.E.L.D.? In my day we knew how to take care of a superhero."

Steve chuckles and shrugs. "What more do you want from a fellow? I do my duty, save the world every couple days, and then rush over to see my best girl."

For a brief moment Peggy's eyes are clearer than he's seen them in a while. "I want you to learn how to live," she tells him, voice stern and serious.

Steve clears his throat, unsure how to reply, but in the blink of an eye Peggy is already far away. It is 1953, and she is calling for her daughter.

The next time Steve visits, it is mere hours before Nick Fury gets three slugs through the chest in his apartment and dies on an operating table in front of him, hours before Hydra sheds its skin and slithers out of hiding and the world he thought he was finally starting to get a handle on gets blown to pieces again. It is 2012 in Peggy's head, and she is reliving their first meeting after he returned from the ice.

It is the last time he ever sees her.

* * *

Wednesday is a drizzly, gray day, the city weighted down by a blanket of fine mist, sodden and sluggish. Steve watches the procession and service from his vantage point behind a distant stand of trees, cap pulled low over his eyes, hunched into his leather jacket. He watches the honor guard, the rifle salute, the shiny uniforms of the soldiers and dark clothing of the mourners, hears the gravity in the voice of the priest. He scans the crowd and sees bits and pieces of Peggy in some of the faces – flashes of her eyes, her nose, her chin, her hair. He watches Sharon Carter, head bowed and face stoic, but he also watches the men standing on the periphery, their eyes too alert, body language too tense, scanning the surrounding area.

Steve steps further back into the shadows.

After the service, as the mourners fade away, Sharon Carter lingers beside the open grave site, and he sees her lips move, her hands clasped together in front of her, and he wonders if it is a valediction, a prayer of benediction, and a part of him, long buried, yearns to know the words.

Sharon looks up and around, her eyes searching a wide circle, and she hesitates for a long while, scrutinizing the expanse around her, rolling green fields and skeletal headstones. Steve almost steps out from his hiding place, but thinks better of it, holds himself still.

After she leaves, after the diggers have finished shoveling the dirt, he finally emerges, stepping cautiously to the edge of the grave. He looks down by his feet, a mound of fresh dirt covering a gaping, jagged wound in the earth, and feels curiously empty, a hollow void somewhere his ribcage should be. He thinks he should say something, but there are no words that come to his lips, and if there were ever any, they get stuck to the back of his throat, pungent and cloying. He wonders if it's better this way, because he doesn't know how to tell her he just ripped the agency she spent a lifetime building to the ground.

Because it doesn't seem real, that the woman he dreams about nearly every night, the woman looming tall in his memory, coy smile and red, red lips, the woman whose bedside he spent the last year beside, the woman he lost and then found again, is lying deep beneath the earth, in this hole by his feet.

Steve loses track of how long he stands there, staring aimlessly at the ground, ignoring the raindrops splattering his face, matting his hair and plastering his jacket, thick and heavy, to his skin.

"Hey, stranger," she says softly behind him, and Steve whirls around. She was always so quiet when she wanted to be, and he was never good at sensing her, even after a year of partnering up on missions. Natasha stands in front of him, clad in a dark jacket and jeans, the ends of her red hair curling slightly in the damp.

Steve blinks in surprise. "Nat. What are you doing here?"

She shrugs. "Sam told me where to find you."

"I thought you were going off the grid."

"I am. I just didn't go far." She favors him with a small, sad smile, and Steve would be lying to himself if he didn't feel the rush of relief that sweeps over him, the quiet twinge of joy at seeing her, healthy and unharmed, before him.

"You didn't need – you shouldn't have come," Steve says, tripping slightly over his words. "It's dangerous."

Natasha peers at him carefully. "Steve – it's Peggy. I needed to come."

Steve frowns at her. "How did you – back at the bunker, you saw her picture and looked right at me and asked who she was."

She shrugs again, and flashes him a wry grin. "I just wanted to see your reaction. Poor taste, sorry. I read your file, Steve. Everything they had on you, when they brought you back. I know who Peggy is."

He reads the meaning behind her words and shakes his head tiredly. He's too exhausted to be annoyed, too empty to snap a retort, tell her it was none of her damn business. Natasha looks at him, and cups a hand lightly around his elbow.

"Come on. Let's get you home."

On the ride back to D.C., she hops on behind him on his motorcycle, arms wound securely around his chest, thighs pressed tightly against his own, and Steve realizes blearily how cold he is, how so very cold he is to his core, and he is unexpectedly grateful for her warmth and solidity behind him. The road zips by them in a blur, slick and glinting with rain, and he thinks dully there might be a good chance he could fall off, but Natasha is calm and steady at his back, and he leans into her.

* * *

When they get back to his building, Natasha takes his elbow once again and leads him straight to the rooftop, bypassing his and Sam's apartment. Steve follows her wordlessly.

Out in the open air, she lets go and turns to face him. "Hit me," she says.

Steve glances dazedly at her, jarring awake. "What?"

"Hit me," she repeats.

He stares at her. "Are you crazy? Why?"

She places both hands on his chest, shoves firmly and he rocks back on his heels. "What the hell? Is this some weird joke?"

"Come on, Rogers, don't be a pussy. Scared of a girl?"

Steve crosses his arms and grits his teeth. "Stop it. Why are you doing this?"

Natasha looks him straight in the eye. "Because you're drowning, Steve. You've been drowning since they pulled you out of the ice. And I think if you don't work something out of your system, keep pushing everything down deep, we're not going to get you back."

"Look who's talking," Steve snaps at her, but she remains impassive. "I'm fine."

"No, you're not," she states, and shoves him again. But Steve plants his feet and it's like shoving a rock, the solid mass of him towering over her. She punches him in the shoulder, hard, and Steve, unprepared, stumbles back.

"I'm not in the mood to play your games, Natasha. Get away from me. I'm _fine_."

"Peggy is dead_, _Steve. The love of your life is in a hole in the ground, and she was an old woman before you found her again. You're not _fine._ You found out your best friend is still alive, but brainwashed and turned into a monster by Hydra. Who knows what he's had to endure, all these years?"

Natasha whirls around and delivers a kick to his thigh, and Steve drops to one knee.

"What the fuck is your problem, Nat? Shut the fuck up," he snarls, shaky and menacing, trembling on the edge of a precipice. Natasha has rarely heard Steve Rogers, all-American hero, swear, and the smirk she flashes him glitters dangerously.

"You're not fine. You were ready to let Bucky kill you, Steve. Dropped your shield and let him pummel, or drown you to death. I _know._ You were half dead when we picked you up. Tell me that's _fine._"

Steve blocks Natasha's next hit, but doesn't make a move towards her. She dances her way, nimble and agile, outside the radius of his reach. His eyes track her, wary and vigilant.

"Peggy is dead and you never got to say goodbye. You just lost the only two people left in the world tying you to your past."

She can see the instant something shifts in his eyes, the spring coming unwound, lock bursting open, hurtling in free fall. Without a sound he comes after her, bowling her over with his bulk, and Natasha steels herself. She extricates herself deftly from his hold and bounces up on her toes, spinning around with a swift roundhouse, but Steve catches her foot and flips her. She counters with a quick series of uppercuts and hooks, and Steve retaliates with his own combo, a couple of rolling hits landing on her torso, sending her lurching. He's pulling his punches though, and Natasha socks him in the jaw, snapping his head back.

"Trust me," she tells him, voice smooth and velvet. "Don't hold back. I can handle it."

They spar in earnest then, legs, arms, hands and feet whirling dervishes, weaving between and against the other's, locked in a deadly dance of spins and kicks, twists and punches only they knew the steps to. For all of his size and strength Natasha counters with her speed and skill, and he marvels at how they're evenly matched, neither of them yielding ground. Natasha drives him back with a series of front and spinning back kicks, Steve pushes her forward, driving his shoulder into her chest, knocking the breath from her. She rolls and whips a left cross against his ribcage, he catches her arm and she twists deftly away. Natasha leaps onto the broad expanse of his back, elbow around his throat, and Steve flips them, pinning her to the ground. He holds her legs down with his own, body trapping her beneath him, one arm heavy against her windpipe.

Natasha goes still underneath him, green eyes wide and tumultuous, and with a sudden break of clarity in his rage-clouded mind he becomes acutely aware of the lithe, lean length of her pressed intimately against him. They're breathing heavily, faces centimeters apart, and Steve looks down at her and sees her pupils dilate. His next move is instinctive, intuitive; he closes the distance between them and seals his mouth to hers, arm moving to cradle her head, fingers tugging sharply through her hair. Natasha returns the kiss for a brief moment, their mouths sliding against each other, rough and hungry, then pushes him firmly away.

"Steve," she says simply, looking steadily back at him, for an instant her walls down, bare and open, offering him a rare glimpse at _her_, behind the masks and guises she dons as naturally as a second skin. Steve groans and rolls off her, and he slams his fist down onto the rooftop, cracks and ripples of broken concrete radiating out around him.

"Peggy," he cries out brokenly, "Bucky." The sudden sense of loss that overcomes him is unbearable. He realizes detachedly that the moisture dripping onto his hand is from teardrops, and he slams his fist down again, and again, and again, until his knuckles are raw and bloody, until his throat is hoarse and guttural, until there is nothing left inside him, only an acrid, bitter taste in the back of his mouth; until exhaustion, at last, floods his system. Until he flips over onto his back and stares up at a lightening sky, the emotions draining slowly out of him, fury and frustration and devastation and grief tumbling and hemorrhaging together and trickling away out of the empty cavity of his chest.

"You're okay." Natasha is bent over him, framed against a dusky sky. The rain has finally stopped, and the setting sun is smearing streaks of red and gold across a crisp, scrubbed sky. He can feel her fingers in his hair, running across his face, gently inspecting a bruise on his cheekbone, a cut on his lip, already healing. "I've got you," she murmurs.

Steve lies still and listens to the distant sounds of the city below him, the hum of thousands of people going about their daily lives, and the sound of Natasha's even breathing above him.

"I'm sorry," she says at length. "About the things I said earlier."

"It's okay." Steve looks up at her. "You were right."

She shakes her head. "I didn't have a right. I was an asshole, trying to goad you–"

Steve places a hand on her arm. "I trust you."

He can see those words impact her the way they did the first time around. The quiet flicker of surprise in her eyes, the tiny curve at the corner of her mouth. He wonders, not for the first time, what happened in her life, to make her doubt herself this way.

"Though you should feel bad for beating me up."

She arches an elegant eyebrow. "Poor Captain America, got his ass kicked by a girl. Feeling sorry for yourself?"

"Not the first time it's happened." Steve thinks of dark hair and red lips, a bull's-eye aim leveled at his shield, once upon a time, and tampers down the gathering tide. It's a tiny bit easier, this time.

"I actually think I won that round," he comments, and hears Natasha snort.

"Please. Wanna go again?"

He manages a small smile, and feels an unexpected lightness in his body, a weight lifted from somewhere within.

"I lost her a long time ago," Steve muses out loud, slowly. "I know that. I've had some time to come to terms with that. Yet it doesn't feel that way at all."

Natasha brushes her fingers lightly across his cut knuckles. "It's the life that was stolen from you. The life you could have had with her. It's the finality of it, understanding that whatever remnants you had are gone forever."

Her voice is even and sure, and Steve wonders. He wonders if one day he will get to learn about the ghosts that haunt Natasha's past. He thinks he wants to.

"Why did you come back?" Steve asks her, quietly.

She sighs softly. "I told you, I owe you. There's red in my ledger, probably more so now. I can't lose–" She closes her eyes briefly. "You're not getting rid of me that easily, Rogers."

Steve doesn't understand the way Natasha sees the world sometimes, in bleeding lines of ink, red and black, in a shuffling balance sheet of favors accrued and debts owed. He wants to tell her that a life lived like that only makes it harder, that she might be shutting herself off from some of the things that make it worthwhile.

"You don't," is all he says instead. "You will never owe me anything."

Natasha quirks a hesitant smile at him. "Well, thank you anyway for the dance, Rogers."

Steve glances at her in astonishment, and then in spite of everything, finds a startled laugh bubbling out of his chest. It turns into another and another, and soon he's laughing wildly at the absurdity of it, the sheer ludicrous irony of it all.

Natasha looks amused, reaches out for his hand and pulls him to his feet. "Take it easy there, captain crazy." She leads him out to the corner of the rooftop and perches comfortably on the ledge, feet dangling over the edge. Steve settles himself in beside her, leg pressed solidly against hers.

The city is spread out before them, and Steve looks over the nation's capital, its beauty and majesty and movement striking a chord deep within him, quieting the rapid fire of his heart.

"You do this too?" he asks Natasha.

"Learned this from Clint. When the world gets to be too much, get above it." She nudges him with her elbow. "Works, doesn't it."

"Yeah."

"She would have wanted you to be happy, you know," Natasha says, after a little while. "She would have wanted you to live a life."

"I know," Steve replies honestly. "It's just – I'm not sure I know how to."

She chuckles dryly. "It's a hard, hard thing to figure out. And we're in the wrong business. But you've got time."

"Have you? Figured it out?"

Natasha furrows her brow and leans her head against his shoulder, relaxed and familiar, as if they've done this a hundred times, and Steve instinctively drapes his arm around her.

"No," she reasons thoughtfully. "I think it's what I'm doing now, though. What I'm looking for."

Steve thinks carefully about her answer. "Nat," he says faintly.

"Hmmm?" she stifles a yawn, presses her face against him.

"Were you worried I was going to do something stupid?"

Her answering grin is languid and dazzling against the descending sun. "Nah. I was worried you weren't going to."

"Nat," he whispers again. "Did we do the right thing?"

Natasha reaches over and threads her fingers through his. "Yeah," she whispers back. "We did."

Steve gazes down at her, at the golden glow of her skin, the strands of her hair splayed across his arm, a deep red under the last tendrils of fiery light streaking across the sky. He feels a slow, creeping trickle of tranquility seeping into the hollow cavity of his chest, a burgeoning sense of ease uncurling into its darkest corners. The knowledge that Natasha came for him, that today, something has indefinably shifted between the two of them, is a surprising balm, something he didn't expect to be grateful for.

Steve woke up in a world he didn't belong in, clutching desperately onto fragments from an old life, a world left long ago in the dust of history. Steve thinks that maybe it's okay to open up his hands and finally let go, that there are people in this new world with clear eyes, who can see him for who he is, who might be there if he stumbles. He thinks that after a great loss, the world shakes and its foundations rattle, but it doesn't fall. It goes on, and a new day dawns.

Sam finds them a half hour later, Natasha curled into Steve's side, both of them watching the lengthening shadows steal across the bricks and mortar of the city they currently called home.

Sam pokes them both in their backsides. "So I picked up takeout. I'm guessing even superheroes need greasy Chinese food once in a while."

He squints at the debris scattered around him and sighs, long and hard. "I'm thinking what with the window you busted and rooftop you decided to tear apart today, we need a plan B for living arrangements. I sure as hell ain't paying for this shit. But hey, you know, take your time, no rush. It's not like anyone's trying to find and kill us. Whenever you're done cuddling." He rolls his eyes at Steve, and saunters back through the stairwell.

Steve shakes his head, hiding a grin, and settles Natasha more comfortably against his shoulder. She doesn't seem to be in any hurry to leave.

He thinks that maybe he lost one family, but gained the beginnings of another. He thinks that it doesn't hurt any less, but maybe he doesn't have to bear it alone. Maybe there is a way to move forward, into the present, into his future. A way to start over; learn to distinguish shades of gray.

Maybe he can learn to live in this brave, new world.

-end-


End file.
